U.S. Pat. No. 4,899,445 discloses a ratchet action manually operated tool for cutting cable or otherwise bringing a pair of jaws together in a scissor action, which includes first and second jaws pivotally coupled together with a pair of actuating, pivotally coupled handles. The first jaw is mounted on the end of a first handle. The second jaw includes a plurality of ratchet teeth for receiving a pawl, which is mounted on a second link extending between the jaw pivot and an end of the second handle. The tool uses a ratcheting action of the pawl and ratchet teeth to close the first and second jaws with respect to each other by repeatedly moving the handles towards and away from each other.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,307,565 discloses another hand operated ratchet tool which includes first and second handles, which are pivotally coupled to each other at one end, and first and second jaws which are pivotally coupled to each other and to the first and second handles through a linkage assembly of three links. First and second pawls are mounted on pivots on the linkage assembly. The second jaw includes a plurality of ratchet teeth for receiving the pawls to rotate the linkage assembly in a direction which closes the adjoining working faces of the jaws when the first and second handles are reciprocated repeatedly toward and away from each other.
While these tools have provided significant improvements over other existing manually operated cable cutters and other ratchet action jaw equipped hand tools known at the time, further improvements to the performance of such tools would be valuable.